Of^ 




Book 



GopigtitN?. 






COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE MAN ON THE HILLTOP 



BY JRTHUR DAVISON FICKE 

SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT- PAINTER 

MR. FAUST 

THE BREAKING OF BONDS 

TWELVE JAPANESE PAINTERS 

THE HAPPY PRINCESS 

THE EARTH PASSION 

FROM THE ISLES 



THE 

MAN ON THE HILLTOP 

AND OTHER POEMS 



BY 

Arthur Davison Ficke 




new york and london 
Mitchell Kennerley 

MCMXV 



COPYRIGHT, 191 5, BY 
MITCHELL KENNERLEY 






PRINTED BY VAIL'BALLOU COMPANY 
BINGHAMTON, NEW YORK 



MAY -5 1915 

©ci.A.'^n,sr>9 5 



A number of the following poems are reprinted here 
with the courteous permission of the Editors of Scrib- 
ner's Magazine, Poetry (Chicago), The Little Review, 
The Smart Set, The Chicago Evening Post Literary Sup- 
plement, The Poetry Journal, The Century, and The 
Forum. 



CONTENTS 

HISTORIES 

PAGE 

THE MAN ON THE HILLTOP 3 

AT ST, STEPHANOS 15 

LYRICS 

THE GREY RIVER 43 

TO THE HARPIES 44 

TO AN OLD FRIEND 45 

PORTRAIT OF AN OLD WOMAN 47 

LINES FOR TWO FUTURISTS 48 

IN LONELY LANDS 51 

A VERY OLD SPRING SONG 52 

THE JEWELS OF THE SUN 54 

SNOWTIME 58 

THE THREE SISTERS 59 

TO A CHILD TWENTY YEARS HENCE 60 

FATHERS AND SONS 61 

I AM WEARY OF BEING BITTER 62 

ELEVEN O'CLOCK 63 

THE BIRDCAGE 65 

AMONG SHADOWS 66 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

LIKE HIM WHOSE SPIRIT 67 

MEETING 68 

A LOVE LETTER 69 

THE OLD MEN'S TALE 71 

CHLOROFORM 72 

SWINBURNE, AN ELEGY 78 

GROTESQUES 

THE GENTLE READER 91 
WHY WOMEN HATE ARTISTS 92 
A POETRY PARTY 93 
PORTRAIT OF A SPIRITUALLY DISTURBED GEN- 
TLEMAN 94 
PORTRAIT OF JOHN COWPER POWYS, ESQ, 95 
TO AN OUTRAGEOUS PERSON 96 
PORTRAIT OF A PORTRAIT PAINTER 97 
TO ARIOSTO, A NOTABLE CRICKET 98 
THE POLICE GAZETTE 99 
IN A BAR ROOM 100 
THE NEWEST BELIEVER loi 
THE WICKET TO THE WISE 102 
SONG OF A VERY SMALL DEVIL 103 
THISTLES 104 



HISTORIES 



THE MAN ON THE HILLTOP 

SHADOWS are round him in my memory — 
Impenetrable shadows, peopling full 
A universe where streams of heavy light 
Reveal strange crouching forms of ominous doom. 
As in the sun's and moon's and stars' eclipse 
I see him on that hilltop; mighty wings 
Flap from the sky above him and surround 
With fierce and fluctuating winds. Alone, 
Sleepless, he waits in his allotted place 
Amid these howling kingdoms of the void; 
Defiant, sacrificed, and conquering; 
Mad; but a great heart, an heroic heart. 

'Twas thus I came upon him : — 

When, at end 
Of college years, one winter, first I learned 
That, if I loved this curious human life 
To which we all with blind affection cling, 
I must with instant haste betake myself 
To regions far from Massachusetts' coasts, 
In hope that desert air would make me whole 
And hearty, — as in fact it well has done. 
And so I went, not fain at all to die; 
And for two years lived on the western plains 
At a friend's ranch until my peril passed. 
There first I saw the man of whom my tale 

3 



4 THE MAN ON THE HILLTOP 

Chiefly shall speak — a raw-boned, flaxen-haired 
Sheepherder ; tall of brow, with sunken eyes, 
And jaw as clean-cut as a vessel's prow: — 
One of those smouldering, intense, strange men 
Whom no spot breeds except the northern fiords. 
He had a name common in his own land — 
Larson : — no common man, for all of that, 
But a great heart; — twisted, awry and blind, — 
Swayed by strange tyrannies, the dupe of dreams, — 
Yet a great heart, moving in mists obscure, 
Protagonist of shadows, single-armed 
Champion against the terrors of the night. 

He had come hither from some eastern town, — 

Pittsburgh, I think, — where his dark youth had passed 

In grip of stern privations. He was born 

Child of a foundry-worker, one of four, 

Brought up on mill-smoke. In the earlier years 

No harder was his lot than many a one 

Which still, upon the whole, brings happiness 

That makes life worth the living. But too soon 

Poverty taught him more than any child. 

Could we direct these things, should ever know. 

One day, toward noontime, taking to the mill 

His father's pail, he, pausing in the door. 

Saw a great crucible swing overhead. 

Moving along the runways of the cranes. 



THE MAN ON THE HILLTOP 5 

And then poise, — sway with rending jar, — and fall, 

Scattering a hail of fire, a cataract 

Of white and glowing steel, that gulfed three men, — 

One man his father, — in the awful flood. 

He told me this; and without words I knew 

How, like the searing touch of that fierce stream, 

The sight had burned itself upon his brain, — 

A thing to tremble at when in the night 

Those spectres rose. And unforgettingly 

Had passed before his eyes the house of grief, 

Where terror of the future almost numbed 

The present sorrow. Then came poverty. 

And vain appeals to the calm men who sat 

In the mill's office with their desks and files 

Of many papers; the recourse at last 

To one of those grey wolves who sometimes hunt 

Under the law's cloak; the unending trial 

That sapped the widow's final hoard : — these things, 

Seen by a child who with his mother stood. 

Three younger ones beside him, and looked out 

Into the endless and appalling void 

Of destitution, could not be forgot. 

But needs must bend the corners of the mouth 

And sink the eyes to sparks in their deep caves. 

Before the law remediless they stood. 

Smitten by chance, that untamed walks the earth; 

Yet, that being true, how little did it feed 



6 THE MAN ON THE HILLTOP 

The hungry mouths! How utterly their fate 
Upon them must have fallen like the blow 
Of evil and malignant deity. 

He never told me how he struggled on: 

It was not hard to guess, — the crumpled years 

Of childhood, till at last he reached that age, 

So pitifully young, at which the poor 

Think children may go forth to earn their bread. 

Into the mills he went: there many years 

He worked among the crucibles, as worked 

His father once before him. But when death 

Came to his mother, and some distant kin 

Took the three other children, he threw off 

The hateful bondage; and went wandering forth 

Westward, to newer regions where a life 

Not cursed with the old curse might wait for him. 

He was a silent man, who made no friends 

Among his lighter comrades; though goodwill 

Was not refused him. He had little talk, 

And that was mostly of the needful things, — 

Weather, and care of horses, and the sheep. 

But sometimes would a chance word start his speech 

Into a burst of sombre eloquence 

Or smouldering passion, — all on one fixed theme, 

The wrongs of laborers. Once I came on him 



THE MAN ON THE HHLTOP 

Out in the stableyard, haranguing there, 

With unaccustomed fervency, a group 

Of scoffing sheepherders. I heard him say — 

" It is the hell-fire burning at earth's core. — 

Men slave like dogs to earn the right to live 

Like dogs: the profit of their labor falls 

From their starved fingers. All the sightless rich 

Are leagued together to oppress and crush 

The laborer. He cannot lift his head, 

Or down into the trampled dust they fling 

Him and his children. You have never seen, 

As I have, the fierce hell that, in the mills 

And out of them, enfolds those living men. 

No one sees things as I do! . . ." 

Looking back 
In memory now, I think his brooding nights 
And silent days all circled round that thought, 
Which drew and held him with a baleful power 
Until its image grew, towered, loomed above 
All else, and blotted out the universe 
With its oppressive shadow. 

Once he said — 
" Children of sorrow cannot be released. 
They are blind, leaderless; and if Moses led. 
Out of the Wilderness toward the Promised Land, 



8 THE MAN ON THE HILLTOP 

No one would follow. Now each blow that falls 
Upon the race falls heaviest on their backs. 
They are the buffers of misfortune." 

Words 
Half-biblical were his when thus he spoke, 
As sometimes is the way of simple men 
Speaking with earnestness from crowded hearts. 

One day I said — " Surely it is some fault 

That keeps men common laborers all their lives. 

To good men comes an opportunity " — 

He answered — " In the valley where they live 

Nothing comes ever but the smoke of hell ; 

And their wild cries, rising, would shake the world 

If it had blood, not iron, in its veins." 

Much more he said, which I have long forgot, — 

Wild words that seethed from out some chaos shut 

Close in his breast. He was a sombre man ; 

Sometimes absurd and sometimes terrible. 

It was that Spring, — that memorable Spring, — 

When from mysterious space the Comet came 

Blazing upon us. And I well recall 

How, long foretold by savants ere to sight 

Of human eye its shape was visible, 

It stirred, among the ignorant, dim fears 



THE MAN ON THE HILLTOP 

And wild conjecture ; so that some believed 
It would destroy this globe, or with its train 
Of fatal gases kill all breathing life. 
We, like the rest, as the high day approached 
When it should sweep most closely to the earth, 
Made our bad jokes, and bantered to and fro 
Talk of the hour when debts and sins should end ; 
And planned to die in drink; and such poor chafi. 
" Larson," I said, " you, probably, alone 
Will be alive on earth when it has passed — 
For you are used to breathing Pittsburgh air, 
And nothing matters after that." 

" No, no," 
Another of us grinned, " Larson will crawl 
Under his own eyebrows, and hide there safe 
Till all is past." 

And then we laughed again. 
But Larson, who had listened to our talk 
With an intentness grave beyond its worth. 
Smiled not at all. He fixed on us the gaze 
Of eyes like sparks, — not angry, but possessed 
By some more secret vision of his own 
And far removed from us ; — and while we laughed 
He left us quietly without reply. 
And for some days thereafter, he would walk 



lo THE MAN ON THE HILLTOP 

Much by himself, and scan the starry sky 
Alone at night, and mutter broken words, 
And start when spoken to. 

Then came the time 
To send a herder to relieve that one 
Who, for a month's term, had kept lonely watch 
Over the sheep upon the upland ranch 
Sixty miles distant. No one loved the task; 
Hence in recurrent order all the men 
Served out their turn. Now in its sequence due 
Was Larson's month at hand, — a month of Spring. 
And so we sent him out one April day, 
Out from the noisy banter of our midst, 
To the monotonous vigil of the heights. 
I see him still as he rode hillward, — gaunt. 
Ungraceful on his horse, looking not back 
With any sign of parting, but alone 
And facing grimly forward, — a gray shape 
In the first dawnlight, growing ever less 
Against the distant slopes. 

In three days, came 
Back from the hill-ranch he whose cheerless month 
At last was over. A great boisterousness 
And a great need of drink possessed his soul; 
But when the first was spent, the last assuaged. 
He spoke of Larson : — 



THE MAN ON THE HILLTOP ii 

"What is all this talk 
About the Comet? Is it really near? 
Larson has told me it is sweeping on 
A million miles an hour, toward the earth, 
A terrible portent, coming to rain down 
Mysterious influences of evil power 
Upon the world, but chiefly upon those 
Who labor in the mills. When it is past, 
No toiler ever will draw happy breath, 
But only choked with evil. They must die, 
Or by the awful gases be transformed 
Into corroded miserable beings 
With lives of agony." 

The men all laughed. 
I did not laugh; for something in the strange 
Fathomless shadow which I always felt 
Deep within Larson's mind loomed now to me 
Dimly foreboding. But the man went on : — 

" He said to me, shortly before I left. 

Things like a book, or like the words I heard 

Once from a pulpit. He's a curious one; 

This is the way he talked : — ' My thoughtless friend. 

The evil days have come; curses shall fall 

Upon men from the heavens, but most on those 

Who most are cursed already. O prepare! 



12 THE MAN ON THE HILLTOP 

For the time approaches. Go: carry to the world 

Tidings from me that men must now atone. 

I have thought long, and light at last has dawned 

I, only I, know wherefore this has come 

Toward earth, and of what evils it is sign, 

And the one hope to save the world. Atone! 

Atone for evil suffered and evil done. 

Ye men of sorrow! Who shall now arise. 

Not leader, but apart from all, to fight 

The sole and dreadful battle for the race ? ' 

Much more he said; I did not understand 

Half that he spoke besides. At any rate, 

The hill-ranch is a lonesome place to be 

If one has only such thoughts on his mind." 

Lonesome indeed! And yet I did not speak 

Nor act, — as we so often in our lives 

Refrain from speech or deed until too late 

For all except regret. But when four days 

Had passed, uneasiness laid hold of me. 

It seemed barbaric torture, thus condemning 

To banishment on solitary heights 

A man pursued by demons of the soul. 

So I determined on a four days' tour 

To see the mountains, meaning to delay 

One day with Larson, with what cheer I could 

Bringing some respite to his solitude. 



THE MAN ON THE HILLTOP 13 

Therefore next morning I proceeded forth 

With one good rancher. The unchanging sweep 

Flowed by on either side as all day long 

We traversed the monotonous sage-brush plains, 

A fiery sun above us; all day long 

The distant mountains slowly crept more near, 

Not changing as we watched, yet every hour 

More towering than the last. And just at dusk 

Weary, we saw ahead the upland ranch. 

I had not visited the place till now; 

And curiously I scanned it as we rode, — 

Saw the gray flocks grow plain upon the slopes, 

And the small cabin and the stable-yard 

Loftily builded. We could not descry 

Larson afar, nor hear him make response 

To our loud greetings. On we went, the night 

Falling around us, though some silvery gleam 

Still shone across the west. Ahead, the hill 

Rose steep ; and in that treeless land, one tree. 

Shattered by wind, stood black against the sky 

Above the hilltop, centring the long slopes 

Toward it. And then the tree drew all my gaze 

By some ambiguous strangeness in its shape — 

Straight, blasted, with two stumps of limbs, confuseJ 

Masses of leafage on its trunk. My thought 

Forgot the man we sought as I pressed on 

Toward the stiff tree; and then, suddenly cold, 



14 THE MAN ON THE HILLTOP 

A weakness closed like fangs upon my heart: 
I saw the man had crucified himself. 

There on a cross of heavy beams he hung, 

Nails through his feet and through one open hand, 

While with the other hand he limply clutched 

At the rough cross-piece. And around him clung 

A dusk of agony. His sunken eyes 

Opened not; but at sound of our quick steps 

His lips moved feebly and he spoke : — 

" Have peace. 
All has been done: the evils are atoned; 
They shall go by and trouble men no more. 
This last curse on the bowed heads shall not fall: 
On theirs it shall not fall, but mine, mine, mine, 
Which has received it for the whole w^orld's sake. 
I have been chosen, I have been sent forth 
Up to the hill-tops and the desert places 
There to atone, atone. All has been done. 
Fear not; the doom is past." 

And when at length 
From that most awful eminence we bore 
His broken form, his lips moved, but no breath 
Came from between them. And he shortly died. 

Shadows are round him in my memory. 
Mad ; but a great heart, an heroic heart. 



AT ST. STEPHANOS 

HIGH, high above the thatched roofs of the town,- 
An hundred times more high than lifts the tower 
Of the Cathedral, — higher than the song 
Of nightingale ascends, or swallow's wing — 
There, where the splintered cliff dizzily drops, 
Sheerer than headland of Gibraltar's straits. 
In one precipitous rock-cloven wall 
To low-lying fields, — there stands an ancient House 
Of refuge and secluded holiness. 

Toward it at sunset from the plains I came, 
Through long defiles ascending, past gaunt slopes 
And barren gullies of the wind-swept hills 
Tenantless as the moon. Upon the crests 
The light still shone; though far below, the dusk 
Covered the fields and with the fear of night 
Amid these wilds o'ertaking me, urged on 
My climbing feet. 

Suddenly on a crag 
That century-beaten, gray-walled monastery 
Against the solemn fires of the west 
Lifted its battlements and pointed roofs 
And faintly smoking chimneys, in the dusk 
Bastions of grayness. My approaching step 
Echoed upon the drawbridge, whose frail span 
Across a narrow deeply-cloven chasm 
Hung tremulous. Through the dim portal arch 

15 



1 6 AT ST. STEPHANOS 

And low cold passageways of mouldering stone 

I passed, in wonder at these massive walls; 

And stood in the gray court, — as empty now 

As though its vanished centuries had borne 

With them away into far gulfs of Time 

What life had once found place here. On three sides, 

The alcoved galleries of the cloisters rose, 

Half-ruined, cheerless: on the fourth, a gate ■ 

Out toward a platform opened, where the rock 

Became the precipice. There spread the West 

A burning flood before me, and the peaks 

Of the white Pindus from it rising up 

Like snow-capped islands; and far, far below, 

Even at my feet, submerged beneath the tide 

Of shadowy haze, the plains of Thessaly. 

Then in the high still air a bell began 
Somewhere its vesper tolling; and those sounds. 
Blurring and blending with recurrent strokes, 
Drifted about me, islanded aloft 
Upon that far-seeing headland ; while below. 
Small and remote, the villages of the plain 
Withdrew into the mists of eventide. 
And pausing thus, upon my spirit came 
That nameless sense, — like odour in a dream, — 
Of ending Summer and the sudden hour 
Of the year's passing which September brings 



AT ST. STEPHANOS 17 

To thrall the musing wanderer on the slopes. 
Then the bell ceased ; and from the chapel doors 
Poured St. Stephanos' holy Brethren forth, 
Dark men and bearded, clad in girdled robes, — 
The garb of those who from the general band 
Of priesthood had themselves to single life 
Vowed, and to poverty, — not the common lot 
For clergy of Byzantium. Forth they strode 
With kindly faces and the greeting hands 
That are the portion of a stranger chanced 
From the great world unto monastic walls, — 
About whose base the seething tide of days 
Beats with tumultuous surges, casting up 
To this lone height rarely a drop of spray 
Or sound articulate of the dizzy strife. 

With friendly cheer, they took my pack and staff; 
And led me to the ancient raftered hall 
Where, round a board sufficient for the need 
Of three-score Brethren, the remaining few, — 
Seven and the Abbot, — took their daily fare. 
Diminished now that ancient company 
Which in the darker ages here maintained 
A citadel of peace amid wild wars. 
Paler, this band, and of less dominant blood, — 
Yet Brethren of great St. Stephanos still, 
And heritors of those who once upreared 



i8 AT ST. STEPHANOS 

This lonely fortress for the praise of God. 

Strange men, strange heritors, these my hosts to-night; 

With whom I sat, and ate the evening meal 

Of kid and lentils and thin acid wine 

With resin steeped, — scant fare, befitting priests 

Vowed unto poverty in a meagre land, — 

Not milk and honey ; — and heard the simple talk 

Of the old Abbot, — how the Summer closed 

Early this year; and how the long ascent 

Had left me weary, doubtless. And this speech 

Of common things which drifted to and fro 

Served but to fill me with a keener sense 

Of utter strangeness. Round our casual talk 

I felt great vistas opening pathless out, — 

Unsounded hopes and passions of these hearts, 

Alien to mine. From these unfathomed eyes 

Looked forth the keepers of a secret life 

Upon a separate world, to me unknown. 

Their gaze beheld another sun than mine; 

The very breeze to them not as to me 

Bore waf tures of unrest or peace or pain ; 

Within their souls a different dream of heaven 

Sustained or tortured. And that wonder grew 

As down the table from grave face to face 

My glances strayed ; and strong my passion burned 

To know what meaning filled their thoughts and days, — 

What boundaries and what contours marked the world 



AT ST. STEPHANOS 19 

Which, through the strange refraction of the soul, 
Each one surveyed, alone 

Methought they seemed, — 
These Brethren of the Heights, — kind, simple hearts, 
Rude shepherds of rude flocks, unlettered, slow. 
Habituated to the pious days 
And narrow duties of the monastery. 
Within those eyes no subtler passion leaped 
Than dogmas of corporeal heaven and hell 
Might teach them: and their little round of being. 
Changeless, sufficient, circumscribed and pure. 
Passed like the herdsman's in the lowlier plains — 
Daylight to dusk, and year to year, one course 
Of unreflective tasks that left no trace 
Upon the scroll of inward history. 

But one among the Brethren, whom the rest 
Called Theodorus, seemed of other mould 
Than all his fellows. In his face the South 
Spoke warm and radiant. Something in his gaze 
Like hesitant intensity of fire 
That flickered, clung, and died, — or the full lips 
And delicate profile, bringing to my mind 
A poet of pale beauties, lately dead, 
Whom now his land acclaimed, — or the desire 
Hardly concealed, which made his features glow 
Attentively a listener as I told 



20 AT ST. STEPHANOS 

Some curious traveller's tale, — these drew my thought 

Recurrently to him. And when his smile 

Gleamed with a flash of eagerness for joy, 

Like starlight among candles, then I felt 

A sudden pang of pity. Here, methought. 

Was one to whom the lusty sinful world 

Was not well lost, — in whom still burned the spark 

Of love for all which faith calls vanity. 

His face betrayed the harp vibrant within. 

The call of beauty never unto him 

Were cold, unmeaning. Each mysterious voice 

Wliich from the loveliness of hill or cloud 

Or dream or music calls our blood, as calls 

The west wind to the waves, — these things would be 

For him the secret masters of his soul. 

And while his Brethren mounted to Heaven's Gate 

With calm unswerving steps, him must the breath 

Of Maytide mornings make their quivering sport. 

A bird-note could whirl chaos through his prayer. 

His vowed allegiance to the Virgin Throne 

Must waver at the beauty of a flower 

Or the soft curve of some girl's shadowy throat 

Seen in the dusk. And if at last he gained 

The prophets' Paradise, it needs must be 

By hard-won mastery which to ruder souls 

Were all unknown. Perilous lay the road, 

Through chanting vales, to his celestial home. 



AT ST. STEPHANOS 21 

At length the meal was ended; and we passed 
In straggling twos and threes out of the hall 
To the rock-platform, where the stars looked down 
Brilliantly on us, and the gulf beneath 
Lay vague and fathomless. Beside me paced 
Now Theodorus, as in eager talk 
He held me from the rest; with outstretched arm 
Pointing this place and that, — towns, mountains, 

streams, — 
All hidden in the night. And one by one 
The Brethren left us for their evening tasks; 
He only lingered yet. 

" Tell me," he said 
" How moves the world in Athens? Do they still 
Place little tables at the cafe doors, 
And sit all afternoon, and watch the crowds, 
And smoke and talk? And do the soldiers drill 
Out beyond Lycabettus as they used? 
And the Piraeus, that bright sinful port, 
Do the great ships still crowd the harbor's mouth, 
And boatmen throng the wharves ? — Or has the world 
Grown quieter than in my day?" 

" The world," 
I answered, " is not quick to change its ways. 
I think that you would find all things the same. 



22 AT ST. STEPHANOS 

Even to the tables, — where three days ago 
I sat and smoked and watched the crowds go by, 
And saw the King pass with his shining guards 
And troops of cavalry." 

His attentive eyes 
Gleamed with the picture. 

** And when did you last 
See white-walled Athens?" I with idle thought 
Questioned him. And with slow words he replied - 
"Twelve years ago: then I became a priest." . . . 
And spoke no more; but shortly turned away. 
Murmuring of his tasks that must be done. 

Then paced I silently the platform's bounds; 
As, on some farthest rampart of the world. 
Alone, at night, a spirit from the stars 
Beyond Orion might alight and pace; 
And looking down upon the sleeping earth 
From that secluded outpost's icy height. 
Marvel in silence on the pageant spread 
Beneath his vision, with the crowded thoughts 
Of one whose being had therein no part. 
And for this spirit tenanting my breast 
Wonder was dominant, — labyrinthine moods, — 
And sense not of the kinship of mankind 
But of Life's strangeness and the infinite forms 
Of days and destinies. 



AT ST. STEPHANOS 23 

The processional stars 
Moved slow above me. As I tarried still, 
Out of the cloisters Theodorus came 
And silently rejoined me; and our steps 
Sounded together, back and forth the rock. 
The great hush of the hour, the shroud of dark, 
Stifling all echoes of departed day, 
Enfolded us. We w^ere alone with night, — 
Night, that in such a silence seems to drop 
The measureless beatings of gigantic wings 
On the frail heart. With such a presence close, 
Our deep seclusion from the sleeping world. 
Our slow concordant footfalls, wove a sense 
Of some strange bond between us as we strode 
Mute and together. On that barrier-ledge. 
Raised like an altar to the lifeless stars, 
A magic greater than old fellowship 
Drew me to him with whom I seemed alone 
In the vast dusk: across the trackless seas 
That sunder man from man, my thought reached out 
Unto this alien, who for one strange hour 
Seemed as a brother. 

Something bade me say, 
After long silence — " I could half believe 
That all the world lay dead beneath our feet. 
And you and I upon this lonely rock 
Solely remained." 



24 AT ST. STEPHANOS 

" Sometimes not more alone " 
He said, " than thus, is one who strays afar 
Circled by minds that have a different birth." 
And through the darkness his unquiet eyes 
Seemed bent upon me. 

Well I knew he spoke 
With thought of me, a stranger; but to me 
An alienage profounder than my own 
Seemed to encircle him ; and to his words 
I answered, with his keen impassioned face 
Vivid before my sight. — 

" My friend," I said, 
" For you this pinnacle must be a tomb : 
You need the sunlands." 

And he understood, 
And flushed, with changing eyes, as though my words 
Had touched the harp-strings in his breast and waked 
Unutterable voices. 



" No," he cried, 
"No land — but life!" . . . 

His speech faltered away; 
And I could feel beneath the burdened words 



AT ST. STEPHANOS 25 

An impulse, — rare in our cold northern race, — 

The longing to reveal to alien eyes 

Things that perhaps could never be revealed 

Save to a stranger, — one whose path lay far, 

So far that never any later day 

Of faith turned bitter could bring forth regret 

That he had spoken. 

But no words I said. 
Being unwilling to invite his speech 
Unless his heart impelled him; I but drew 
A little closer, with attentive ear: 
While ministry of silence told my mood 
With greater eloquence than mortal tongue 
Could master, doubtless; and I heard his breath. 
And tremors seemed to shake him; and at last 
From subterranean chambers hid from light. 
Long sealed and voiceless, now in broken words. 
With many a pause and space for groping thought, 
Poured forth such speech as from no other man 
I ever heard, nor like shall hear again. 

" I think that you are one who understands. 
When our eyes met across the board to-night 
You looked at me with glance that well might read 
Something of those dim travails of the mind 
Which to the Brethren here upon the rock 



26 AT ST. STEPHANOS 

Possess no being. Righteous men are these, 
But peasant-priests, half-kindred to the herds, 
Ignorant of the strange convulsive powers 
That may inhabit us. . . . 

** My stranger-friend, 
Things long repressed burn on my lips to-night. 
Born of your look, your voice." ... 

Gently I said - 
** I will devote my heart to understand." 
And at those words, he spoke — as Winter snows 
In the Spring floods sw^eep o'er the thirsty lands. — 

" You find me here, a Brother in the halls 
Of St. Stephanos; but my birth was far 
In southern islands, where the Cyclades 
Lie like a barrier westward from one isle : — 
O isle of brightness I shall not know again, 
Mykonos, bride of sea-winds and the sea! 
My home, amid the windmills on the heights. 
Looked out toward Delos and the western waves 
Wherein the sun sank down each eventide 
With hues that were to me song poured from heaven, - 
A wild enchantment, drawing forth my soul 
In longing for all beauty. On the hills 
Of her, my rocky island, as a boy 



AT ST. STEPHANOS 27 

I walked in vision; and the ancient tales 
Of Homer, and the legends of the shrine 
That once was crown of Delos, and the forms 
And colors and wild odours which my dreams 
Wove from the sunsets and the changing spray, 
Wrought in my soul a passion, a desire 
Past understanding, for exalted deeds 
And life that should be beautiful, like the Gods! 
I was a Pagan, with the bards who sang 
Once from these isles the praises of the fair 
Golden Apollo. From some headland rock. 
Looking across the waves, I could have raised 
My psan, too, of sacrificial joy 
Unto the deities of sun and sea! 

I scarce remember in what forms I dreamed; 
Yet well I know that dreams by night and day 
Moved where I moved, building a world apart 
From unregarded casual daily things. 
I dwelt among those moments, few and crowning. 
Which chronicle and legend garner up 
From the lone triumphs of heroic hearts, — 
Time's precious harvest, slowly winnowed forth 
Out of the lives of thousands who go down 
Barren of such a radiant grain. All peaks 
Whence man views life as lord : — what Jason saw 
With the first hope, and at the final goal ; 



28 AT ST. STEPHJXOS 

What Alexander felt when the last gate 
Of secret Eastern city fell, and kings 
Knelt at his chariot ; what Euripides 
Knew as the multitude with bated breath 
Quivered and was dumb to hear Electra speak : — 
Out of such man-elous fragments as these things 
I wrought my fair mosaic, that sen-ed my faith 
As pattern of the world and of man's life. 

Ah, I was happy! but no more content 
Than ever man is. My enkindled thoughts, 
Fed upon visions, whispered that afar 
And yet untasted lay that sunlit world 
Whereof the pallid moon-dreams of my youth 
Were but a shadow and a prophec}'. 
Glowing, it called me toward the richer da\-s 
Of which my hope breathed and the poets sung. 
Now must the myster}\ long viewed afar, — 
Life, Life itself, unbosom unto me 
Its beautiful meaning. Wlierefore did I stay, 
Tarrying in the porch before the shrine? 
Nay, I would enter to the inmost hall. 
To the close presence of that deit\- 
A\Tio. though remote, with palpitant glowing touch 
Had waked divinest madness in my breast, 
And the dim promise of sharp loveliness, 
And uttermost longing for the clasp of Life. 



AT ST. STEPHANOS 29 

Therefore, obedient to that stirring call 
Heard in lone hours, filled with exalted thought, 
I left my rocky island and keen spray 
Of salty winds, and unto Athens came, 
There to abide and earn my bread and find 
The undiscovered marvels of my fate. 
And can you picture, — you, with thoughtful eyes, — 
How in the city fared that dreaming boy, 
Credulous still of all the golden tales 
Which from the poets' music and the light 
Of sunset-wests he had distilled to drops 
Of keener essence? Can your vision pierce 
The coarse engulfing crowds of teeming men 
Down to the last deep, where in shrinking doubt, 
I, child and dreamer, moved, — first whelmed by 

power ; — 
Then lost, as, by some spell, the pomp and stress 
Crumbled about me, — and I stood alone 
In a vast desert. Dust, pitiful dust 
Lay that existence in my shrinking hand. 
Where was the lofty doom my dreams had sung? 
Where were the ecstasies and the hours of flame? 
Bewildered grew the promise of my soul. 
As the world's business, sordid oft and base. 
Seethed by me like a nightmare : all men's thoughts 
Seemed rapt in petty matters which like leaves 
Floated upon the vortex of the hour 



30 AT ST. STEPHANOS 

And then were drowned beneath the on-rushing stream, 

Forgotten and unmemorable. Those hearts 

In whom, methought, long intercourse of life 

Had surely stored some more-revealing sense 

Of what our being meant, and what was good, 

And where the true goal for our striving lay, — 

Those, intricately netted, seemed to dwell 

A thousand fathoms deep beneath the tide 

Of fragmentary labors toward no end. 

Like play of madmen. None, of all I saw, 

Felt the great doubts that hem our mortal lot, 

Or looked with wonder toward the tranquil stars 

Or into the far depths of his own soul. 

Unguided conflict, — random ebb and flow 

Of days and deeds, — confusion of one force 

Smiting against another in its path, — 

What could I make of these unreasoned things? 

And to my sense, fevered with strange dismay, 

Men loomed like brutes who in the forest roved. 

Whose history was recorded by gnawed roots 

And trampled grasses, — and white bones at last. 

Another race they seemed ; yet as I dwelt 
There in the town, and labored at my trade 
Shoulder to shoulder with them, slowly passed 
That sense of alienage. Into my thought 
Slowly there entered, gradual bit by bit, 



AT ST, STEPHANOS 31 

Some consonance with theirs. By painful steps 

I came to know why tolling men put by 

The visions that had nurtured them in youth. 

I saw the vanity of the rootless joy 

Which youth and beauty foster till the hour 

When weight of burdens kills the fragile bloom. 

The harshness of the actual iron world 

Broke in upon my spirit. I beheld 

Bitter realities as the ruling force 

Upon this pitiful soul of ours, which strains 

Heavenward on frail wings. I saw the dream, 

Woven of all the past's enchanted gold, 

Shattered by those necessities which ride 

With vast material dominance through the realm 

Of spiritual being. I saw earth, sea, 

Time, space, all yield, reluctant, to the toil 

Of man who in that desperate flux and press 

Battles for barely life. Until at last 

I, also, cast all hope and rapture by; 

Acknowledged me as servant of cruel powers, — 

A pigmy struggling in a tragic world 

For mere existence : — I, who late had thought 

To choose among the destinies of the Gods 

For which should best accord with my desire! 

Thereupon I became as other men, 

Spending my heart upon each worthless task, 

Incurious of the meaning; and, as they, 



32 AT ST. STEPHANOS 

No longer scrupulous of little things 

Like careless wrongs, or other lives awry 

By my rough passing: I no longer set 

Patterns of beauty for the weary soul ; 

But as of very need, accepted quite 

The creed that was my fellows', half -resigned 

Unto a world of chaos ultimate. 

So the years passed, as in the city's streets 
I moved and had my life, where crowded days 
Stifled all pause for thought. Yet in the Spring 
Sometimes strange passions would revisit me; 
And night-long I have lain awake to watch 
The bright processions of my former dreams 
Arise again and pitifully lead 
Their ranks in holy wars to conquer back 
The soul's lost empire from those tyrant powers 
Which should have subject station and obey, 
Not master, life. And lo! one April noon 
As o'er my task I labored, from lone deeps 
Long buried in me, burst a fierce revolt 
Against that creature which I had become. 
I cried — This life of mine, this dull, misshaped 
And vegetable being, shall not be 
My final sepulcher! I will arise: 
I will go up into the lofty places 
Apart from all man's works, and there commune 



AT ST. STEPHANOS 33 

With God and mine own soul. I will search out 

By lonely thought some meaning or accord 

Or radiant sanction that may justify 

The ways of life. The void and troubled world 

Will I renounce, to gain in solitude 

What the world gave not, — sense of life's design. 

Then fared I toward the mountains of the north. 
That land behind us yonder, where the wastes 
Of aught but God's own self are tenantless. 
And wandering aimless, in the weary mood 
Of one who finds the glories of the earth 
Glamouries only, to this spot I came, — 
A far retreat whose name to me was known 
Long as a legend. When I saw these walls 
Which from their dizzy height looked calmly down 
Upon the distant world, — beheld the blue 
Of tranquil heaven around these summits cling, 
Where no sound broke the silence of the slopes, 
Lo! this, I felt, was my abiding-place. 
My spiritual home, where life might be 
Once more my own and not the multitude's. 
Thereupon, with glad zeal, I sought the gate. 
Begging admission to the brotherhood ; 
Though little holiness was in my soul 
Save that which God's omniscient tender eyes 
Might find in the wild longing that was mine 



34 AT ST. STEPHANOS 

For something nobler than my days had found. 
And when my rapt novitiate was past, 
I with exultant lips assumed the vow 
Of life-long service, and irrevocably 
Closed the last portals of the world behind. 

Peace here I sought, a little peace from life, — 
A little time that might pass gently by 
Afar from the coarse clamors of the world 
And purposeless confusions. I would trace 
In silence and seclusion that fine thread 
On which are strung, like fair or faded flowers 
Along a garland, the successive days: 
Which in the city's press become a heap 
Of crushed disordered blossoms, and conceal 
The filament that joins them. For meseemed 
That, as a reveler by cups of wine 
At last overcome no longer tastes the grape 
But madness only — so where life is swift 
And strong and tense and multitudinous 
Of forms and deeds, there life annuUs itself 
Into confusion ; and the crowded years 
Are filled with living till no life remains. 
Hence with great yearning I desired to dwell 
Apart from these things, in a place of peace 
Where, from the visions of the sunrise hills 
And books and musing talk and the low voice 



AT ST. STEPHANOS 35 

Of my own soul, I might remould the world 
Into a pattern beautiful and clear. 
My hope was high to reconcile at last 
The harsh disorder of the warring earth 
With needs and verities that dwelt within. . . . 
I try to tell you these things but I think 
I cannot pour their meaning into words 
Unless you too already somewhat know 
Whereof I speak. . . . 

Slow passed the tranquil days 
Of my first years in St. Stephanos' walls. 
Prayer, and long service at the altar-place. 
And common speech, and silence much alone, 
Were mine as portion. But contentment dwelt 
No more with me. Great weariness in its place 
Became my fellow, and a sense of foiled 
Inaction haunted me, more hard to bear 
Than turmoil. For the visions came no more 
Which once at Myconos had filled my soul ; 
Or if they came, of little worth they seemed 
To one who had beheld the toiling world 
And the great pulsing streams which in the streets 
Of crowded cities meet and part and strain 
In dim and purgatorial confluence. 
Somberly I beheld, with alien eyes, 
My brother-priests serve at the altar-cross. 



36 AT ST. STEPHANOS 

And with untroubled worship send their souls 

Straight through the incense to the blissful seat 

Of God the Father. But my lagging thoughts 

Tarried behind upon the strong young heads 

Of the few shepherds who, amid these heights 

Now wandering, knelt at mass within our gates. 

Their troubled lives, their toil, their fears and hopes 

Stood between me and Heaven. Their life was mine. 

Their laboring days were mine. I felt arise 

Like a great tide the sense of fleeting things — 

Tenderness, joy, labor and hope and strife, — 

All ours a little while, then to be gone; 

But when departed, treasured in the heart 

With clinging light of old remembrances. 

I felt that glow, unutterably sweet, 

Which makes the love of life haunt all our days 

With wonder and desire. My homesick breast 

Longed for the eager city and its stress 

Of meeting man with man : — things theirs, but now 

Not mine for evermore. And then, too late, 

In certitude I knew myself one born 

A passionate child of life and not of dreams. 

As here I dwelt through slow unchanging days, 
This knowledge waxed in me. Gone was the hope, 
Eternally, I think, of infinite joy 
Awaiting in some fortunate golden land. 



AT ST. STEPHANOS 37 

But the rude fellowship of the eager world 

Called me, and calls me still. I am content 

With quieter thoughts than those which once transformed 

My being, as the sunlight a fair cloud 

Transfuses into wonderful wreaths of gold. 

No more do I desire upon the hills 

To stand at even, and feel through my veins 

Pour wild unutterably stirring breath 

Of harmony with some transcendent lyre 

Singing where sunset faded down the slopes. 

For I have passed the magic of that time 

And youth's unbodied visions. I have seen 

The half-lights of the exquisite morning fade, 

And daylight walk the land. And I have taught 

The baffled spirit to forego its dreams, 

Content within a less imperial space. 

Amid the things that are. For now meseems 

That nothing in the world is wholly fair 

And nothing wholly foul ; but all are blent 

Of a strange stuff, whose mingled dark and bright 

I saw, and still must cherish till I die. 

O youths who stand upon the singing hills, 
Your bosoms full of singing! Well you know 
The sacred light of vision, the unrest 
Of pure desire for some immortal goal! 
But you have yet to learn the common face 



38 AT ST. STEPHANOS 

Of life and days and plain realities 

And the slow reconcilements of the heart. 

But I have learned; and now I long to go. — 
I would return unto the city's strife, 
And move amid the vast and thrilling crowds, 
Those wonderful crowds of living, breathing men; 
And feel again the wildly stirring sense 
That every passing form might prove to me 
A comrade or a brother or a foe, 
A lover or a well of fierce desire! 
With unsolved powers each one is eloquent. 
There in the city moves no single form 
So mean or lofty that it may not be 
A shuttle in the dizzying gold-shot web 
Which, stretching out on all sides round me there, 
Inscrutably is woven ; and creates, 
Out of chance looks and errant turns and stops 
And random meetings and unpurposed words, 
The infinite woof that is my life and me. 
That life I cry for! Here I die of dreams. 
I perish, as a breath along the wastes." 

And I, to whom the tale had been a scroll 
In a strange language writ, which line by line 
Revealed dim meaning, could not make reply. 
But looking down from those monastic walls, — 
That hoary refuge of a thousand years 



AT ST. STEPHANOS 39 

Remote upon the precipice of the rocks, — 
Once more the sense of ending Summer crept 
Out of the night upon me: and once more 
I seemed as one who looks from a far place 
Upon a scene wherein he has no part. 
I viewed, as one beholds a gathered flower, 
Man's life, and its strange pitifulness; so sweet 
That memory makes the heart to overflow: 
So bitter that men turn from it, as turned 
This soul beside me, to the world of dreams: 
So fleeting, that the darkness hovers close 
Even while the seeker pauses to debate 
The better path, or turns to mourn in vain 
A choice regretted, and the days go by 
Bearing what still remains. . . . 

With calmer words 
Now Theodorus spoke. — 

" For I would have 
A little light, leaping from eye to eye, — 
A little warmth, as hand grasps eager hand 
In swift adventure at whose every turn 
Some eager lure awaits : — it is not much, 
But it is everything! Tenderness, joy. 
Labor and love and strife, — all fleeting things, 
But sweeter than the sharp sweet island wine, 
And the one solace . . . and the one solace! " 



40 AT ST. STEPHANOS 

Then without pause for answer, he was gone 
And the night hid him. To my troubled rest 
Shortly I went, nor sought his side again. 
Having no speech to answer the dim tale 
Which he had uttered, though I think he knew 
It was not coldness silenced me. 

At dawn 
I rose and forth proceeded on my way 
Over the mountains. As I turned to look 
Back for the last time at those gray walls 
And weathered battlements, my final sight 
Was Theodorus, in his following eyes 
That strange tense wistfulness for joy and life, 
As from the gate he waved me a farewell. 



LYRICS 



THE GREY RIVER 

THE swallows have departed. 
The harvest moon has come. 

rare, O lyric-hearted, 
Why are you dumb? 

Your words, that once in summer 
Glowed like a magic wine, 
Are frozen. Aye! and dumber 
Than yours are mine. 

The mists upon the river 
Drift like ghosts in a dream. 

1 think such greyness never 
Has hung on the stream. 

I think such greyness never 
Has brooded over me. 
Greyly flows the river 
Down to the sea. 



43 



TO THE HARPIES 

YOU who with birch or laurel 
Are swift to scourge or bless - 
Silence your foolish quarrel 
Before her loveliness. 

What though she went a-travel 
Down paths you do not know? 
Your words shall not unravel 
Webs that allured her so. 

Hush now your foolish babble 
Around her golden head. 
Shut out the prying rabble. 
Be happy. She is dead. 

Now give one final kindness 
That late you dreamed not of — 
Silence, to cloak your blindness — 
Peace, since you know not love. 



44 



TO AN OLD FRIEND 

OU have determined all that life should be; 
I think it still an infinite mystery: — 
Therefore we disagree. 

Go, friend, and trouble not our happy past 
With memory of the parting here at last 
Amid confusions vast. 

Go — and remember me as one astray, 
If so you will. Aye, if you choose it, pray 
For my misguided way. 

Perhaps, — who knows ? — from deeps I must explore 
I shall look back regretful to the shore 
Where we two walked before. 

Or else, perhaps, across a troubled sea 
My reckless sail shall push inflexibly 
Till the west swallows me. 

Then warnings of my doom your children tell. — 
Say that your friend, whose life was launched so well, 
Went to eternal hell. 

Or will you be more honest ? — will you say 
That in the closing of a stormy day 
Your friend once sailed away — 

45 



46 TO AN OLD FRIEND 

And that mid foam that deafened all replies 
He passed beyond the vision of your eyes 
To luminous western skies? 



PORTRAIT OF AN OLD WOMAN 

SHE limps with halting painful pace, — 
Stops, — wavers, — and creeps on again, — 
Peers up with dim and questioning face 
Void of desire or doubt or pain. 

Her cheeks hang gray in waxen folds 
Wherein there stirs no blood at all. 
A hand like bundled cornstalks holds 
The tatters of a faded shawl. 

Where was a breast, sunk bones she clasps. 
A knot jerks where were woman-hips. 
A ropy throat sends writhing gasps 
Up to the tight line of her lips. 

Here strong the city's pomp is poured. . . 
She stands, unhuman, bleak, aghast, — 
An empty temple of the Lord 
From which the jocund Lord has passed. 

He has builded him another house, 
Whenceforth his flame, renewed and bright. 
Shines stark upon these weathered brows 
Abandoned to the final night. 



47 



LINES FOR TWO FUTURISTS 

WHY does all of sharp and new 
That our modern days can brew 
Culminate in you? 

This chaotic age's wine 
You have drunk — and now decline 
Any anodyne. 

On the broken walls you stand, 
Peering toward some stony land 
With eye-shading hand. 

Is it lonely as you peer? 
Do you never miss, in fear, 
Simple things and dear, 

Half remembered, left behind? 
Or are backward glances blind 
Here where the wind 

Round the outposts sweeps and cries — 
And each distant hearthlight dies 
To your restless eyes? . . . 

I too stand where you have stood; 
And the fever fills my blood 
With your cruel mood. 
48 



LINES FOR TWO FUTURISTS 49 

Yet some backward longings press 
On my heart: yea, I confess 
My soul's heaviness. 

Me a homesick tremor thrills 
As I dream how sunlight fills 
My familiar hills. 

Me the yesterdays still hold — 
Liegeman still unto the old 
Stories sweetly told. 

Into that profound unknown 
Where the earthquake forces strown 
Shake each piled stone 

Look I ; and exultance smites 
Me with joy ; the splintered heights 
Call me with fierce lights. 

But a piety still dwells 
In my bones; my spirit knells 
Solemnly farewells 

To safe halls where I was born — 
To old haunts I leave forlorn 
For this perilous morn. 



50 LINES FOR TWO FUTURISTS 

Yet I come! I cannot stay! 
Be it bitter night, or day 
Glorious, — your way 

I must tread ; and on the walls, 
Where this flame-swept future calls 
To fierce miracles, 

Lo, I greet you here! But me 
Mock not lightly. I come free — 
But with agony. 



IN LONELY LANDS 

THUS straying — 
Infinitely delaying — 
Turning into the wastes ofttimes aside — 
Borne out to empty sea on the breast of many a tide 
Seduced by winds of Maying, — 
O yet, beloved and beloveds, bide 
A little, and with patience overspread 
My shelterless head 

Which, to a righteous heaven, such target stands 
As must invite the dread 
Judgment-pronouncing brands 
On me, still straying. ... 
O you and ye, trust me a little while; 
Love me a little, touch me with your hands ; 
Believe a little that I still wander praying 
In lonely lands. 



SI 



A VERY OLD SPRING-SONG 

¥ AM too old for their wisdom, that is so young. 
•■' Less than nothing to me are the paths they have set. 
Shrill in my ears is the song by the Maenads sung 
When like a storm down the hillsides their speed was 

flung — 
And I am not so foolish I can forget. 

Bosoms shaken and lips that are riots of June — 
Arms wild, knees wild, hair wild, tossed like the spray — 
Mocking the icy dreams of the tranced moon — 
Lifting flaunting laughter, a wanton tune 
For the wanton winds of the night to ravish away! 

Give me wine! Give me the rout, and hands 
Mad to meet mine, arms that are starved for me. 
Now when Spring comes dancing over the lands. 
Blue robe streaming slipped from its girdle-bands, — 
Am I a rock, to be blind when all must see? 

Wine! Wine! Wine! and the wine of eyes 
Lighting to mine, eager to slay me or drown 
All their will in my deeps, — a passion that flies 
Blindingly past my vision, — a tumult that cries — 
" Up to the midnight hills where the stars go down ! " 

I am too old for their wisdom ; aye, far too old 
For what the greybeards mutter beside the fire. 

52 



A VERY OLD SPRING-SONG 53 

I remember that lone in the darkness cold 

Earth and silence will soon my wisdom enfold. . . . 

Now will I shout on the hilltops of my desire! 



THE JEWELS OF THE SUN 

GRAVE was your speech ; where the departing year 
Down slopes to westward smouldered, a dim fear 
Drew slowly near 

And held you, — fear not for your hopes but mine. 
Through whom the autumn chillness poured sharp wine, 
A passionate anodyne. 

" To you fresh mysteries bring each day their lure," 
At last you said. " Would that my heart were sure 
They can endure! 

" But I mistrust the tides of your unrest. 
What if at last, having with rebel breast 
Stormed up the west, 

" The jewels of the setting sun you hold 
In eager hands, — to find the fires grown cold. 
And you are old ? — 

" And bitterness enshrouds your heart with grey, 
Homesick at last for that fair tranquil day 
You cast away? " 

I was too drunk with wonder to reply. 
There where the sunset fired the shattered sky 
And day went by. 

54 



THE JEWELS OF THE SUN 55 

But here where night enwalls my solitude 
There comes out of the vaults wherein I brood 
A speaking mood — 

And I would now have you forever know 
I see unduped the path whereon I go 
To heights or overthrow. 

Aye, mine shall be the jewels of the sun! 
But when the splendour of the fight is done 
And the race run — 

Think you I know not of the day to be 
When all my world shall turn to vanity 
And life grow black to me? 

Now flight is mine, from azure peak to peak. 
Soon, soon enough, the pinions shall grow weak 
And the strength break. 

Soon shall the noonday of my longing set; 
Soon shall the wings, — yes, even the heart, forget. 
And yet, and yet — 

Begrudge me not my moment of desire — 
My fleeting hope that rises fiercely higher 
Toward the sun's fire. 



56 THE JEWELS OF THE SUN 

It too shall pass. Yet of such flights as these 
Is woven the tissue of the destinies 
Of all that man now is. 

And out of such his future shall come forth — 
Flights to the sun, the west, the icy north — 
Each of so little worth. 

Yet as I live, these hold my utter trust. 
I love the one hour when from dying dust 
Man rises in fierce lust. 

And strikes athwart the sky in wild delight, 
Athirst for regions far beyond his sight. . . . 
Then comes the night — 

And downward sinks the tired wing, and slow 
Beats the mad heart that past the sun would go — 
In fatal overthrow. 

Mine too shall come! I, in some haven blest, 
Shall also in the end sink down oppressed 
To the predestined rest. 

And other wings shall beat across the blue, 
And other hearts shall dream their dreams come true, 
Kindled anew. 



THE JEWELS OF THE SUN 57 

But not in me. Life, that is lord of all, 
Shall have passed by me, — passed beyond recall 
In that late Fall. 

Doubtless my lips shall then unsay things said 
When all the glory of living flight vi^as shed 
Around my head. 

And I shall clasp, with weak and thankful heart, 
Whatever faded blossom there apart 
Can ease my smart. 

Blot then my name! Divorce me from the past! 
Mark me as one whom life has used, and cast 
Into the dust at last! 

And write above my doorway — " This is one 
Who grasped, an hour, the jewels of the sun — 
Whose tale is done." 



SNOWTIME 

IS it Summer that you crave — 
Swallows dipping wing — 
Evening light across the wave — 
Or some remoter thing? 

Some report of happier places — 
Golden times and lands — 
New and wonder-laden faces — 
New and eager hands? 

Nay, you know not. . . . But I know 
Round you cold is furled 
Like this shroud of trampled snow 
That smothers up the world — 

Where no trust in any Spring 
Now can heal or save, 
Nor the icy sunlight bring 
Swallows o'er the wave. 



58 



THE THREE SISTERS 

GONE are those three, those sisters rare 
With wonder-lips and eyes ashine. 
One was wise and one was fair, 
And one was mine. 

Ye mourners, weave for the sleeping hair 
Of only two your ivy vine. 
For one was wise and one was fair. 
But one was mine. 



59 



TO A CHILD — TWENTY YEARS HENCE 

YOU shall remember dimly, 
Through mists of far-away, 
Her whom, our lips set grimly, 
We carried forth today. 

But when, in days hereafter, 
Unfolding time shall bring 
Knowledge of love and laughter 
And trust and triumphing, — 

Then from some face the fairest. 
From some most joyous breast, 
Garner what there is rarest 
And happiest and best, — 

The youth, the light, the rapture 
Of eager April grace, — 
And in that sweetness, capture 
Your mother's far-off face. 

And all the mists shall perish 
That have between you moved. 
You shall see her you cherish; 
And love, as we have loved. 



60 



FATHERS AND SONS 

CHILD to whom my loneliness 
Cries — and cries, I know, in vain,- 
Down the years I look and bless; 
Down the years let my hand press 
Strong your shoulder. I am fain 
You should reap from my sown pain 
Flowers of joy and loveliness. 
Child I love, and love in vain. 

You will never turn to me 
As I turn and cry to you. 
Regions strange and visions new 
Shall be yours to search and see. 
Old and alien I shall be. 
I who love you set you free. 
Yet recall I cried to you, 
Child I love so utterly. 



6i 



/ AM WEARY OF BEING BITTER 

I AM weary of being bitter and weary of being wise, 
And the armor and the mask of these fall from me, 
after long. 
I would go where the islands sleep, or where the sea- 
dawns rise, 
And lose my bitter wisdom in the wisdom of a song. 

There are magics hid in melodies, unknown of the sages. 
The powers of purest wonder on fragile wings go by. 
Doubtless out of the silence of dumb preceding ages 
Song woke the chaos-world, — and light swept the sky. 

All that we know is idle; idle is all we cherish; 
Idle the will that takes loads that proclaim it strong. 
For the knowledge, the strength, the burden, all shall per- 
ish. 
One thing only endures, one thing only, — song. 



62 



ELEVEN O'CLOCK 

AT last after many wanderings 
I believe in the true gospel. 
I will write no line for any man 
Nor for all men together. 
For myself, as from myself, 
Shall my songs have being, — 
As out of chaos 
The stars and planets 

Emerged, authentic lights of their own life. 
For myself and from myself 
Shall my words issue. 
And if hereafter 
Any who follows 

Find in the wandering lights and scattered dust 
Aught eloquent of sunrise or of harvest, 
He shall be welcome to his sea-drift, 
His random salvage. 

Yet, it may be, 
I from my icy bondage, 
My far seclusion. 

Shall in the end falter and break my vigil. 
Drawn out to him by love that leaps the walls 
Of perfect peace. 



63 



64 ELEVEN O'CLOCK 

— But this is weakness ! 
Mine is the living gospel. 
I will write no more for any man, 
Aye, not for all men. 



THE BIRDCAGE 

O TRAGIC bird! whose bleeding feet, 
Whose maddened wings dizzily beat 
Against your cage in agony, 
Soon, soon to win your liberty! 
Still you believe that happiness 
Dwells just beyond the bars you press, — 
That if a sudden miracle 
Gave your desire, life would be well. 
The old old dream! The old old lure! 
The devil plays; his stakes are sure. 
With happiness he baits his gin 
That still mankind shall perish in. 
And still we trust our hearts could be 
Blessed by the distant liberty. 
Blind to the newer agony! . . . 
The earth will be a frozen coal 
Before man knows his traitor soul. 



AMONG SHADOWS 

IN halls of sleep you wandered by, 
This time so indistinguishably 
I cannot remember aught of it 
Save that I know last night we met. 
I know it by the cloudy thrill 
That in my heart is quivering still; 
And sense of loveliness forgot 
Teases my fancy out of thought. 
Though with the night the vision wanes, 
Its haunting presence still may last — 
As odour of flowers faint remains 
In halls where Helen's shade has passed. 



66 



LIKE HIM WHOSE SPIRIT 

LIKE him whose spirit in the blaze of noon 
Still keeps the memory of one secret star 
That in the dusk of a remembered June 
Thrilled the strange hour with beauty from afar — 
And perilous spells of twilight snare his heart, 
And wistful moods his common thoughts subdue, 
And life seethes by him utterly apart — 
Last night I dreamed, today I dream, of you. 
Gleams downward strike; bright bubbles upward hover 
Through the charmed air; far sea-winds cool my brow. 
Invisible lips tell me I shall discover 
Today a temple, a mystery, a vow. ... 
The cycle rounds: only the false seems true. 
Last night I dreamed, today I dream, of you. 



67 



MEETING 

GREY-ROBED Wanderer in sleep . . . Wan- 
derer — ... 
You, also, move among 
Those silent halls 

Dim on the shore of the unsailed deep? 
And your footfalls, yours also, Wanderer, 
Faint through those twilight corridors have rung? 

Of late my eyes have seen. . . . Wanderer. . . . 
— Amid the shadow's gloom 
Of that sleep-girdled place 

I should have known such joy could not have been — 
To see your face; — and yet, Wanderer, 
What hopes seem vain beneath the night ^n bloom? 

Wearily I awake. . . . Wanderer. . . . 
Your look of old despair 
Like a dying star 

In morning vanishes. But for all memories' sake, — 
Though you are far, — tonight, O Wanderer, 
Tonight come, though in silence, to the shadows there. . . . 



68 



A LOVE LETTER 

NOW looking back across the twenty years, 
Seeing once more your delicate bended head. 
Feeling once more the sharp salt of your tears 
Upon my lips, — things that I thought were dead 
Rise and will speak, — speak of the dream we knew, 
The white hours, the incredible hours, now done. 
I feel again the magic winds that blew 
Across our twilights; and I seem alone 
With you once more, when in the lamplit glow 
You filled the dusks with terrible melody, 
Borne on whose flood my spirit seemed to grow 
Into that greater which I longed to be. 
And then I see the days that followed after, — 
The dark days, the blind days, when there rang 
Through our old haunts a shriek of ribald laughter 
To mock the melodies that late you sang. 
I see the uncertain gloom, the sudden end, — 
The end of loving, — and the madhouse days. 
You said — " I cannot, dare not, — O my friend! " . . 
Little you knew the parting of our ways! 
You went, and utterly were vanished thence. 
I see the shadowy months that after passed — 
And then the years grey with indifference 
When all I prayed was dying died at last. 
Until there came an iron callous mood, — 
Scorn of mankind, — a blessed icy dumb 
Contempt for life, like poison in my blood — 

69 



70 A LOVE LETTER 

The bitter scoffing brain I have become. 
Oh love, tonight, led by some trick of fate, 
Seeing the dream we cowards never proved, 
There rises in me an immortal hate 
For you, the only soul that I have loved. 



THE OLD MEN'S TALE 
(from ''the history of the three kingdoms" by 

LO KUAN CHUNG) 

GREEN are the hills as in far times forgotten. 
But past them flows a river to the eastward 
That journeys ever, and that changes ever — 
A ceaseless current. 

The gifted and the great have known its windings, 
And drifted with them past our farthest vision. 
And good and evil and defeat and conquest 

Down that stream vanish. 

We, the old men, white-haired and full of leisure, 
Quietly tend our little isle of waters, 
Spending our days in the calm life of fishers 

With the flood round us. 

We look upon the silent moon of Autumn ; 
And feel the coolness of the Spring's light breezes; 
And with a jar of gleeful wine between us 

We meet together; 

And all the past, gone down the eternal river, 
And all the present, floating on its bosom, 
Are to us but a pleasant tale remembered, 

Told in the twilight. 

71 



CHLOROFORM 

(written in collaboration with MARY ALDIS) 

A SICKENING odour, treacherously sweet, 
Steals through my sense heavily. 
Above me leans an ominous shape, 
Fearful, white-robed, hooded and masked in white. 
The pits of his eyes 

Peer like the port-holes of an armored ship, 
Merciless, keen, inhuman, dark. 
The hands alone are of my kindred ; 
Their slender strength, that soon shall press the knife 
Silver and red, now lingers slowly above me. 
The last link with my human world . . . 

. . . The living daylight 
Clouds and thickens. 

Flashes of sudden clearness stream before me, — and then 
A menacing wave of darkness 
Swallows the glow with floods of vast and indeterminate 

grey. 
But in the flashes 
I see the white form towering, 
Dim, ominous. 

Like some apostate monk whose will unholy 
Has renounced God ; and now 
In this most awful secret laboratory 
Would wring from matter 

72 



CHLOROFORM 73 

Its stark and appalling answer. 

At the gates of a bitter hell he stands, to wrest with eagei 

fierceness 
More of that dark forbidden knowledge 
Wherefrom his soul draws fervor to deny. 

The clouds have grown thicker; they sway around mc 
Dizzying, terrible, gigantic, pressing in upon me 
Like a thousand monsters of the deep with formless arms. 
I cannot push them back, I cannot! 
From far, far off, a voice I knew long ago 
Sounds faintly thin and clear. 

Suddenly m a desperate rebellion I strive to answer, — 
I strive to call aloud. — 
But darkness chokes and overcomes me: 
None may hear my soundless cry. 
A depth abyssmal opens 
And receives, enfolds, engulfs me, — 
Wherein to sink at last seems blissful 
Even though to deeper pain. ... 

O respite and peace of deliverance! 
The silence 

Lies over me like a benediction. 
As in the earth's first pale creation-morn 
Among winds and waters holy 
I am borne as I longed to be borne. 



74 CHLOROFORM 

I am adrift in the depths of an ocean grey 

Like seaweed, desiring solely 

To drift with the winds and waters; I sway 

Into their vast slow movements ; all the shores 

Of being are laved by my tides. 

I am drawn out toward spaces wonderful and holy 

Where peace abides, 

And into golden aeons far away. 

But over me 
Where I swing slowly 
Bodiless in the bodiless sea, 
Very far, 

Oh very far away, 
Glimmeringly 
Hangs a ghostly star 

Toward whose pure beam I must float resistlessly. 
Well do I know its ray! 
It is the light beyond the worlds of space. 
By groping sorrowing man yet never known — 
The goal where all men's blind and yearning desire 
Has vainly longed to go 
And has not gone : — 

Where Eternity has its blue-walled dwelling-place, 
And the crystal ether opens endlessly 
To all the recessed corners of the world. 
Like liquid fire 



CHLOROFORM 75 

Pouring a flood through the dimness revealingly; 

Where my soul shall behold, and in lightness of wonder 

rise higher 
Out of the shadow that long ago 
Around me with mortality was furled. 

I rise where have winds 
Of the night never flown; 
Shaken with rapture 
Is the vault of desire. 
The weakness that binds 
Like a shadow is gone. 
The bonds of my capture 
Are sundered with fire! 

This is the hour 
When the wonders open! 
The lightning-winged spaces 
Through which I fly 
Accept me, a power 
Whose prisons are broken — 

... But the wonder wavers — 
The light goes out. 

I am in the void no more ; changes are imminent. 
Time with a million beating wings 
Deafens the air in migratory flight 



76 CHLOROFORM 

Like the roar of seas — and is gone ... 

And a silence 

Lasts deafen in gly. 

In darkness and perfect silence 

I wander groping in my agony, 

Far from the light lost in the upper ether — 

Unknown, unknowable, so nearly mine. 

And the ages pass by me. 

Thousands each instant, yet I feel them all 

To the last second of their dragging time. 

Thus have I striven always 

Since the world began. 

And when it dies I still must struggle . . . 

The voice I knew so long ago, like a muffled echo un- 
der the sea 

Is coming nearer. 

Strong hands. 

Grip mine. 

And words whose tones are warm with some forgotten 
consolation. 

Some unintelligible liope. 

Drag me upward in horrible mercy; 

And the cold once-familiar daylight glares into my eyes. 

He stands there. 
The white apostate monk, 



CHLOROFORM 77 

Speaking low lying words to soothe me. 

And I lift my voice out of its vales of agony 

And laugh in his face, 

Mocking him with astonishment of wonder. 

For he has denied ; 

And I have come so near, so near to knowing . . . 

Then as his hand touches me gently, I am drawn up 
from the lonely abysses. 
And suffer him to lead me back into the green valleys of 
the living. 



SWINBURNE, AN ELEGY 

I 

THE autumn dusk, not yearly but eternal, 
Is haunted by thy voice. 
Who turns his way far from the valleys vernal 
And by dark choice 

Disturbs those heights which from the low-lying land 
Rise sheerly toward the heavens, with thee may stand 
And hear thy thunders down the mountains strown. 
But none save him who shares thy prophet-sight 
Shall thence behold what cosmic dawning-light 
Met thy soul's own. 

II 

Master of music! unmelodious singing 

Must build thy praises now. 

Master of vision! vainly come we, bringing 

Words to endow 

Thy silence, — where, beyond our clouded powers. 

The sun-shot glory of resplendent hours 

Invests thee of the Dionysiac flame. 

Yet undissuaded come we, here to make 

Not thine enrichment but our own who wake 

Thy echoing fame. 



78 



SWINBURNE, AN ELEGY 79 

III 

Under some turf, I know not where, in slumber 
Lies all thy mortal part; 

And wintry rains and fallen leaves now cumber 
That ruined heart. 

Soon shall thy frame, like any common clay, 
Transformed to wild-flowers, rise to greet the day. 
Than those which from an oaf spring not more fair. 
But far from where the wintry rain-drops fall, — 
In many a lighted welcoming festal hall, — 
Thy soul is there. 

IV 

Not o'er thy dust I brood, — I who have never 
Looked in thy living eyes. 
Nor hoarded blossom shall I come to sever 
Where thy grave lies. 

Let witlings dream, with shallow pride elate, 
That they approach the presence of the great 
When at the spot of birth or death they stand. 
But hearts in whom thy heart lives, though they be 
By oceans sundered, walk the night with thee 
In alien land. 



8o SWINBURNE. AN ELEGY 



For them, grief speaks not with the tidings spoken 
That thou art of the dead. 
No lamp extinguished when the bowl is broken, 
No music fled 

When the lute crumbles, art thou nor shalt be; 
But as a great wave, lifted on the sea. 
Surges triumphant toward the sleeping shore, 
Thou fallest, in splendor of irradiant rain, 
To sweep resurgent all the ocean plain 
Forevermore. 

VI 

The seas of earth with flood-tides filled thy bosom; 
The sea-winds to thy voice 

Lent power; the Grecian with the English blossom 
Twined, to rejoice 

Upon thy brow in chaplets of new bloom; 
And over thee the Celtic mists of doom 
Hovered to give their magic to thy hand ; 
And past the moon, where Music dwells alone. 
She woke, and loved, and left her starry zone 
At thy command. 



SWINBURNE, AN ELEGY 8i 

VII 

For thee spake Beauty from the shadowy waters; 
For thee Earth garlanded 

With loveliness and light her mortal daughters; 
Toward thee was sped 
The arrow of swift longing, keen delight, 
Wonder that pierces, cruel needs that smite. 
Madness and melody and hope and tears. 
And these with lights and loveliness illume 
Thy pages, where rich Summer's faint perfume 
Outlasts the years. 

VIII 

Outlasts, too well! For of the hearts that know thee 
Few know or dare to stand 

On thy keen chilling heights; but where below thee 
Thy lavish hand 

Has scattered brilliant jewels of summer song 
And flowers of passionate speech, there grope the throng 
Crying — " Behold ! this bauble, this is he ! " 
And of their love or hate, the foolish wars 
Echo up faintly where amid lone stars 
Thy soul may be. 



82 SWINBURNE, AN ELEGY 

IX 

But some, who find in thee a word exceeding 

Even thy powers of speech — 

To whom each song, — like an oak-leaf crimson, bleeding, 

Fallen, — can teach 

Tidings of that high forest whence it came 

Where the wooded mountain-slope in one vast flame 

Burns as the Autumn kindles on its quest — 

These rapt diviners gather close to thee : — 

Whom now the winter holds in dateless fee 

Sealed of rest. 

X 

Strings never touched before, — strange accents chant- 
ing,— 
Strange quivering lambent words, — 
A far exalted hope serene or panting 
Mastering the chords, — 

A sweetness fierce and tragic, — these were thine, 
O singing lover of dark Proserpine! 
O spirit who lit the Maenad hills with song! 
O Augur bearing aloft thy torch divine, 
Whose flickering lights bewilder as they shine 
Down on the throng! 



SWINBURNE, AN ELEGY 83 

XI 

Not thy deep glooms, but thine exceeding glory 
Maketh men blind to thee. 
For them thou hast no evening fireside story. 
But to be free — 

But to arise, spurning all bonds that fold 
The spirit of man in fetters forged of old — 
This was the mighty trend of thy desire; 
Shattering the Gods, teaching the heart to mould 
No longer idols, but aloft to hold 
The soul's own fire. 

XII 

Yea, thou didst burst the final gates of capture; 
And thy strong heart has passed 
From youth, half-blinded by its golden rapture. 
Into the vast 

Desolate bleakness of life's iron spaces 
And there found solace, not in faiths, or faces, 
Or aught that must endure Time's harsh control. 
In the wilderness, alone, when skies were cloven. 
Thou hast thy garment and thy refuge woven 
From thine own soul. 



84 SWINBURNE, AN ELEGY 

XIII 

The faiths and forms of yesteryear are waning, 
Dropping, like leaves. 

Through the wood sweeps a great wind of complaining 
As Time bereaves 

Pitiful hearts of all that they thought holy. 
The icy stars look down on melancholy 
Shelterless creatures of a pillaged day — 
A day of disillusionment and terror — 
A day that yields no solace for the error 
It takes away. 

XIV 

Thee with no solace, but with bolder passion 
The bitter day endowed. 

As battling seas from the frail swimmer fashion 
At last the proud 
Indomitable master of their tides 
Who with exultant power splendidly rides 
The terrible summit of each whelming wave, — 
So didst thou reap, from fields of wreckage, gain; 
Harvesting the wild fruit of the bitter main, — 
Strength that shall save. 



SWINBURNE, AN ELEGY 85 

XV 

Here where old barks upon new headlands shatter 
And worlds seem torn apart, — 
Amid the creeds now vain to shield or flatter 
The mortal heart, — 

Where the wild welter of strange knowledge won 
From grave and engine and the chemic sun 
Subdues the age to faith in dust and gold, — 
The bardic laurel thou hast dowered with youth. 
In living witness of the spirit's truth 
Like prophets old. 

XVI 

Thee shall the future time with joy inherit. 
Hast thou not sung and said — 
" Save its own light, none leads the mortal spirit, 
None ever led "? 

Time shall bring many, even as thy steps have trod, 
Where the soul speaks authentically of God, 
Sustained by glories strange and strong and new. 
Yet these most Orphic mysteries of thy heart 
Only to kindred can thy speech impart; 
And they are few. 



86 SWINBURNE. AN ELEGY 

XVII 

Few men shall love thee, whom fierce powers have 
lifted 
High beyond meed of praise. 
But as some bark whose seeking sail has drifted 
Through storm of days, 
We hail thee, bearing back thy golden flowers 
Gathered beyond the Western Isles, in bowers 
That had not seen, till thine, a vessel's wake. 
And looking on thee from our land-built towers 
Know that such sea-dawn never can be ours 
As thou sawest break. 

XVIII 

Now sailest thou dim-lighted, lonelier water. 
By shores of bitter seas 

Low is thy speech with Ceres' ghostly daughter, 
Whose twined lilies 

Are not more pale than thou, O bard most sweet, 
Most bitter ; — for whose brow sedge-crowns were mete 
And crowns of splendid holly green and red; 
Who passest from the dust of careless feet 
To where the sunrise thou hast sought shall greet 
Thy holy head. 



SWINBURNE. AN ELEGY 87 

XIX 

Thou hast followed after him whose hopes were 
greatest, — 
That meteor-soul divine; 

Near whom divine I hail thee ! — Thou the latest 
Of the bright line 

Of flame-lipped masters of the spell of song, 
Enduring in succession proud and long. 
The banner-bearers in triumphant wars : — 
Latest, — and first of that bright line to be. 
For whom thou also, flame-lipped, spirit-free, 
Art of the stars. 



GROTESQUES 



THE GENTLE READER 

*^TT /"HY does the poet choose to sing? 
▼ ^ No impulse ever stirred in me 
The wish to make myself a thing 
To which all mocking jibes might cling! " 
Perhaps he sees more than you see. 

" Why should this fool go crying out 
The secrets of his soul? In steel 
I case myself, nor care to shout 
Those things one does not talk about." 
Perhaps he feels more than you feel. 

" If I had wisdom to impart, 
I'd say the thing, and let it go, — 
Not trifle with a foolish art 
And make a motley of my heart! " 
Perhaps he knows more than you know. 



91 



WHY WOMEN HATE ARTISTS 

THANKS, beloved; here's your pay. 
Now get you quickly out of the way. 
For there are many more things to do ; 
And all my pictures can't image you. 



— AND ALSO 

Ladies who court me, pray court me with song; 
I cannot be bothered with anything less. 
Do me the honor of wearing full-dress — 

Trust me to say when you've worn it too long. 



92 



A POETRY PARTY 

FRONTING a Dear Child and an Infamy 
You sat; and watched, with dusk-on-the-mountain 
eyes, 
The marching river of the beer go by, 
Alert in vain for a band-crash of surprise. 
I also! Dawn, that in respectful way 
Entered a-liveried, could no lightnings rouse 
For which I watched; the calling-card of day 
Flushed with no guilt your Hebridean brows. 
Wherefore the Infamy and I went down 
Into a street of windows high and blind. 
His face, his tongue, his words, his soul, were brown. 
But from a window lofty and left behind, 
Like a silver trumpet over the gutter-dirt, 
You waved! — (I know not what; perhaps a shirt.) 



93 



PORTRAIT OF A SPIRITUALLY DISTURBED 
GENTLEMAN 

O PIECE of garbage rotting on a rug, — 
To what a final ending hast thou come! 
Art thou predestined fodder of a bug? 
Shalt thou no more behold thy Dresden home? 
When green disintegration works its last 
Ruin, and all thy atoms writhe and start, 
Shall no frilled-paper memories from the past 
Drift spectral down the gravy of thy heart? 
Can the cold grease from off the dirty plate 
Make thee forget the ice-box of thy prime, 
And soon, among the refuse-cans, thy fate 
Blot out the gay fork-music of old time? 
Ah well! All music has its awkward flats — 
And after all, there are the alley-cats! 



94 



PORTRAIT OF JOHN COWPER POWYS, ESQ. 

WHEN first the rebel hosts were hurled 
From heaven, — and as they downward sped 
Flashed by them world on glimmering world 
Like mileposts on that road of dread, — 

One ruined angel by strange chance 
On earth lit stranded with spent wing. 
There, when revived, he took his stance 
In slightly battered triumphing. 

And still he stands; though lightning- riven, 
More riotous than ere he fell, — 
Upon his brow the lights of heaven 
Mixed with a fore-gleam out of hell. 



95 



TO AN OUTRAGEOUS PERSON 

GOD forgive you, O my friend! 
For, be sure, men never v^ill. 
Their most righteous wrath shall bend 
Toward you all the strokes of ill. 

You are outcast. — Who could bear, 
Laboring dully, to behold 
That glad carelessness you wear, 
Dancing down the sunlight's gold? 

Who, a self-discovered slave. 
As the burdens on him press, 
Could but curse you, arrant knave, 
For your crime of happiness? 

All the dogmas of our life 
Are confuted by your fling — 
Taking dullness not to wife, 
But with wonder wantoning. 

All the good and great of earth, 
Prophesying your bad end, 
Sourly watch you dance in mirth 
Up the rainbow, O my friend ! 



96 



PORTRAIT OF A PORTRAIT PAINTER 

POISED like a nonchalant design 
Of Cupid, hesitant he stands, 
With eyes that pucker, measure, shine — 
Brush, palette juggled in his hands. 

He pauses in his pleasant strut — 
Weighs brush — aims — and with panther-pace 
Strides up to sweep one purple cut 
On the blank canvas' passive face. 

Backward and forward — aim, then leap — 
He showers long gashes on the white. 
The wounds bleed jewels; rainbows creep 
In livid splendor forth to light. 

A savage form begins to gleam, 
Writhing in curious vibrant strife. 
Like forces of a madness-dream 
Rises a shape of monstrous life 

Wherein with mordant calm he limns — 
At last stripped bare of mild pretence 
And casual dominance of his whims — 
His own immortal insolence. 



97 



TO ARIOSTO, A NOTABLE CRICKET 

COME drink a merry toast, O! 
To little Ariosto. 
All Peacocks that in pride may strut 
The Alley are alluring — but 
A certain sweetness debonair 
Has dwelling only where our Ar- 
iosto sings his little tunes 
Of mad and merry mystic runes, — 
Of wine and wizardry and Spring, 
And many another damned thing. 
Doubtless the April winds that stir 
Each grossly human Him or Her, 
To Ariosto's tiny breast 
Bear also tidings of unrest. 
But what a curious kind of art 
Must ease the burden of his heart! 
Like Mordkin, Ruth St. Denis, and 
The whole Terpsichorean band 
Whose skill such joyful solace brings — 
It's with his hind legs that he sings! 

How short is life! He soon must hence 
Vanish. But give him recompense. — 
O hostess kind, pray seek no more 
To sweep the last crumb from the floor. 
And prithee spill, my gentle host, — O 
One Bacchic drop — for Ariosto. 
98 



THE POLICE GAZETTE 

WHERE drab along the thundering city streets 
Straggles the crowd in somber dress and mean, 
In a shop window often have I seen 
A tiptoe form whose lure each passer greets — 
Some silk-limbed girl whose smile our frowning 

meets — 
Some little half-clad comic-opera queen 
As whitely shimmering as the Cytherene, 
A playful goddess of the printed sheets. 

Strange light — that from this tinseled form pours gold 
To follow me six footsteps on my way! 
Strange ugly passers — whom this hussy bold 
Lures with dull lust or chills with dull dismay! 
Strange world — that has denied the gods of old 
Who thus steal back amongst us in our day! 



IN A BAR ROOM 

ACROSS the polished board, wet and ashlne, 
Appalling incantations late have passed. 
For some, the mercy of dull anodyne; 
For others, hope destined an hour to last. 
Here has been sold courage to lift the weak 
That they embrace a great and noble doom. 
Here some have bought a clue they did not seek 
Into the wastes of an engulfing gloom. 
And amorous tears, and high indignant hate, 
Laughter, desires, passions, and hopes, and rest, — 
The drunkard's sleep, the poet's shout to fate, — 
All from these bottles filled a human breast! 
Magician of the apron ! Let us see — 
What is that draught you are shaking now for me? 



100 



THE NEWEST BELIEVER 

THROUGH his sick brain the shrieking bullet 
stormed, 
Wrecking the chambers of his spirit's state. 
The gleam that brightened and the glow that warmed 
Those arrassed halls sank quenched and desolate. 
Out of the balefully enfolding mesh, 
Life he would free from dominance of evil ; 
And purpose deeper than the weak-willed flesh 
Bade him renounce the world, the flesh, the devil. 
And as I looked upon his shattered face 
Hideously fronting me in that dark room, 
I saw the Prophets of the Church take place 
Beside him — they who dared the nether gloom 
For worlds of life or silence far away, — 
So hated they the evil of their day. 



lOI 



THE WICKED TO THE WISE 

'' A BRILLIANT mind, gone wrong! " ... 

JLj^ O tell me, ye who throng 
The beehives of the world, grow ye not ever weary of 
this song? 

" The way our fathers went "... 
Yes, if our days were spent 

Sod-deep, beside our fathers' bones, wise, needless were 
your argument. 

"The wisdom of the mass" ... 
Thank God, it too shall pass 

Like the breathed film hiding the face grayly within the 
silvered glass. 

"All's surely for the best!" . . . 
Aye, so shall be confessed 

By your sons' sons, marking where down we smote you 
as we onward pressed! 



102 



SONG OF A VERY SMALL DEVIL 

HE who looks in golden state 
Down from ramparts of high heaven, 
Knows he any turn of fate 
It must be of evil given — 
He perhaps shall wander late 
Downward through the luminous gate. 

He who makes himself a gay 
Dear familiar of things evil — 
In some deepest tarn astray — 
Close-companioned of the Devil, — 
He can nowhere turn his way 
Save up brighter slopes of day. 

Plight it is, yet clear to see. 
Hence take solace of your sinning. — 
As ye sink unfathomably, 
Heaven grows ever easier winning. 
Therefore ye who saved would be, 
Come and shake a leg with me! 



103 



THISTLES 

THEY blow by the wayside, they march in the 
wood. — 
** Tell me, for what are these vile weeds good?" . . . 

Not as a crop for your meadow-land. 
Not to seize and crush in your hand. 

Not to eat, and not to smell; 
Nor daisy-like can they fortunes tell. 

Asses may eat, and take no harm — 
Monkeys may hug them with unscathed arm — 

But you — beware ! how you touch this thing, 
This amethyst-emerald bloom with a sting. 

And yet — strange ! — once did I know a man 
Who watched all day where the thistles ran 

In glorious straggling multitude 
Out of the border of a wood. 

He watched, enthralled, the whole day through. 
Only when night hid from his view 

Their purple riot of useless wars. 
He turned, half-loath, to the kindred stars. 



104 



